Baroness Grender: My Lords, like my colleagues on these Benches, I wholeheartedly support the Bill and congratulate Bob Blackman and the noble Lord, Lord Best, on their work on it. I congratulate the Government on their support and the DCLG Select Committee, chaired by Clive Betts, on its pre-legislative scrutiny. It is rare in this place that we view something that has been through a proper process of due diligence in the Commons. Today we have been served not the usual dog’s breakfast from the other place but a hale and hearty dinner, lunch and high tea, with a cheeky cocktail thrown in, too. It deserves a fair wind, full support and a speedy process in this place.
The new duty to assist those threatened with homelessness within 56 days and the prevention measures that are included are a historic step forward for those of us who have campaigned in this area for too many years to mention. At a time of so much division, that this issue crosses party divides and has consensus is further evidence that Jo Cox was right when she said that,
“we are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us”.—[Official Report, Commons, 3/6/15; col. 675.]
The people who will be served by the Bill need our consensus and united purpose now more than ever.
Part of that achievement is the work of Crisis, its independent expert panel and the backing of Centrepoint, DePaul, Homeless Link, Housing Justice and St. Mungo’s. It was on a visit to St. Mungo’s in Shepherd’s Bush that I met a couple in their mid-20s who had been rough sleeping. They were far from the borough they started out in and therefore had little chance of help in a place that did not want to take on the burden of  their problem. I am delighted that the Bill, particularly Clause 2 with its duty to provide advisory services, will start to tackle those kinds of issues.
I am sure that most noble Lords would agree that it is crucial to know who is homeless in order to identify how best to help them, which is why I am so concerned about the continuing failure of DCLG to be robust in its analysis of levels of homelessness. Last August the DCLG Select Committee published a report on homelessness and expressed serious concerns about data collection and robust information. It sought reassurances from Marcus Jones, the Minister for Local Government, that data would be robust by the end of the year, as he had received, frankly, a bit of a ticking-off from the UK Statistics Authority a year earlier. He was unable to give that commitment.
At the end of last year I was so concerned about the use of DCLG statistics regarding homelessness that I made a complaint to the Statistics Authority, which published its result this week upholding my complaint, which is available on their website. What transpired from its inquiries as a result of my complaint was that statements were being published, without proper clearance in DCLG, making the claim that homelessness was currently less than half its 2003 peak. Those statements were made without placing them in any context. I praise the Minister for using much more cautious language in this place than any of his colleagues have.
The reason why I believe this is important is that, first and foremost, data should be robust. When Howard Sinclair from St Mungo’s and the DCLG Select Committee ask us to consider the strong recommendation that CHAIN, the multiagency database, should be used across the country rather than the current methodology of a snapshot survey, we should listen.
Secondly, the highly political use of the reference to the 2003 peak suggests a level of complacency on the part of this Government—complacency that is not borne out by their backing of this Bill—about how many people are sleeping rough. Frankly, you would struggle to walk through the streets just outside this building currently and make that argument. The CHAIN database records information about rough sleepers and the wider street population of London. The DCLG’s figures on rough sleeping are based on rough-sleeping counts and estimates carried out on one night in October and November each year. At the time when the estimates were introduced it was progress, but technology and recording have moved on. CHAIN is a continuing record, with different categories of all contact by outreach teams, every day of the year.
In the Select Committee report, the CHAIN projection between April 2015 and March 2016 was that there were 8,096 people seen sleeping rough in London compared with the 940 reported in the DCLG’s equivalent figure. I say to the civil servants behind the Minister and back in the department that I hope my complaint to the UK Statistics Authority will result in greater power for you to put your foot down when the numbers cannot be defended. When Ministers make decisions about funding and support for the Bill to the total of £61 million, I worry about which estimates they are using. I worry that DCLG is underestimating the problem, and I can see no evidence to argue against  that. When London Councils argues that the £61 million will not go very far and Lewisham estimates that the additional burdens will cost it £2.4 million, I sincerely hope that we are listening.
Shelter says that the Bill must be implemented but cannot be seen in isolation from the necessary resources to back it up, which includes help for private tenants—tenants that according to the new White Paper the Government will champion. So in tandem with this Bill I ask the Government to look again at local housing allowance rates, as the noble Lord, Lord Best, described, to ensure that they reflect actual housing costs, and use that as a powerful tool to prevent homelessness alongside the Bill.
I am also delighted with the recently announced intention to ban tenants’ fees from lettings agents. I believe that will alleviate an up-front burden for many on the cliff edge of homelessness in the private rented sector. I particularly welcome the commitment by the Government to review the implementation of this legislation and its resourcing two years after commencement of the main clauses.
This is all about the future so I thought I would share with the House a letter written by a schoolboy from St Patrick’s primary school in Sheffield, asking us to give our wholehearted support to the Bill. He says:
“I am writing to you because of the appauling amount of innosent people living on the dusty streets!”.
So he sees the problem just as we do. His name is Minar Khan. He expresses a very nice vision of the future, as does the Bill.
I have expressed concerns about the robustness of the data in particular, and I would like to hear the Minister’s response to that. However, I conclude by saying I have no hesitation in expressing our full support for the Bill going through unamended. I congratulate all who have been involved in campaigning for it and I hope that we can get on with it as soon as possible.

Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood: My Lords, my position on the Bill is rather less in favour of the noble Lord, Lord Winston, than it is against the Bill as a whole. I come to the Bill with no pretence to any medical expertise or direct experience in this field but, alas, as an arid lawyer. As such, I seek to stand aside from the huge emotional weight which always attaches to debates on abortion and on disability—whereas here, where both those emotive topics come together, there is much to be disregarded.
The Bill is concerned with cases where there is a substantial risk, recognised by two doctors, of a child being born with a serious handicap. As the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, for whom I have the most profound regard, recognised at Second Reading, at column 2546 of Hansard, if that risk comes to light within the first 24 weeks it is highly likely that, if the mother so wishes, she may be aborted under Section 1(1)(a) of the Act. However, if it is discovered later, the question arises—and this is the crunch question—should the mother be compelled to carry that child to birth or should she be allowed a later abortion?
According to the statistics given at Second Reading by the noble Baroness, Lady Chisholm, at column 2560 of Hansard, in 2015 there were some 230 abortions carried out under the Section 1(1)(a) provision after the 24-week initial period. That squares with the figure given by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, of some 200 to 300 women.
The noble Lord, Lord Alton, for whom I have the greatest respect, as I have for all who have taken part on both sides of this debate, referred at Second Reading—as he has again today—to terminations on grounds of “rectifiable disabilities”, and mentioned cleft palate and hair lip, and in Committee he added club foot. I find it difficult to suppose there have been Section 1(1)(d) cases after 24 weeks on those grounds, and that two registered medical practitioners have certified in the terms of that provision. If they have, that seems to be a matter for the proper policing of this legislation. It is not the altar on which should be sacrificed the interests of those 200 or 300 women a year whom this Bill is otherwise condemning to be  required to bear that child, whatever feelings they may develop, and however justifiable that it is a disability which only came to light after 24 weeks. For my part, I would not wish that they be so condemned.

Lord Shinkwin: My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have expressed support for my Bill and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Winston, for his medical lecture on so-called serious foetal anomalies. I address the noble Lord, Lord Winston, with respect but I also address him and all other noble Lords as an equal. I should say at the outset that I totally reject the very premise of this amendment. Other noble Lords have already explained why the amendment is totally inappropriate and, indeed, crassly insensitive, from a Northern Ireland perspective in particular, when it is linked to Amendment 8. I offer a disabled person’s perspective on why it is unacceptable. I have been consistently clear that the purpose of my Bill—a disability rights Bill—is to bring the law as it applies to disability discrimination before birth into line with the laws that your Lordships’ House has already passed to counter disability discrimination after birth.
Noble Lords will know that I accepted an amendment in Committee for an impact review as a logical amendment to a logical Bill. However, in the context of a Bill which promotes disability equality where discrimination begins before birth, this cynical amendment is not remotely logical. Indeed, it runs counter to very essence of my Bill. The amendment reinforces discrimination because it singles out even more acutely a particular group for destruction on grounds of disability. It seeks to legitimise their destruction after 24 weeks with terminology that commands no clinical consensus and despite the fact that cell-free foetal DNA can first be detected in maternal blood as early as seven weeks’ gestation, which means that genetic or chromosomal abnormalities are being detected well in advance of 24 weeks. So what justification is there for abortion after 24 weeks on the grounds of so-called serious foetal anomaly?
Some noble Lords have seen that I recently asked the Department of Health about the number of fatal foetal abnormalities diagnosed in each of the past five years. The answer was that the information is not collected centrally. I followed up and asked about the number of fatal foetal abnormalities diagnosed after 24 weeks in each of the past five years. The answer was the same: the information is not collected centrally. I find that revealing, not because information is being concealed but because it reflects the reality—the truth of the situation.
Those noble Lords who were invited to attend a meeting on this issue, which I understand was held somewhere in the House on Wednesday, could be forgiven for thinking that there is some medical authority—some clear medical consensus—behind the definition of “fatal foetal abnormality”. There is not because there is not an agreed definition. Indeed, the consensus is that what is considered fatal or life-limiting involves a degree of subjective judgment which is influenced by understandings and by the availability of technology, both of which can change with time. The noble Lords who received the invitation to that meeting might also have got the impression, as was intended by the wording of the invitation, that those 230 disabled babies aborted after 24 weeks in 2015 had all been diagnosed with severe or fatal foetal abnormalities. They were not. Of the 659 babies aborted for the crime of having Down’s syndrome, for example, two were aborted at 25 weeks, one at 26 weeks, one at 28, one at 30, another at 31, three at 32 weeks, two at 33, two at 34—and one at 39 weeks.
The question for me, apart from the obvious one of why the severely disabled Member of your Lordships’ House sponsoring the Bill was not even contacted about the meeting, is therefore twofold. First, how do the organisations behind the meeting—the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, the Family Planning Association and the organisation for termination for abnormality, now named euphemistically as Antenatal Results and Choices—know that the 230 disabled babies aborted in 2015 after 24 weeks because of their disability had all been diagnosed with severe foetal abnormalities? The answer is that they do not know. The Department of Health has already said that the information is not held centrally, so none of these organisations knows this and neither does the noble Lord, Lord Winston. So secondly, why should they have insinuated and implicitly claimed this? The answer is in their overtly discriminatory agenda, which informs both this amendment and the noble Lord’s complete failure even to make contact with me.
This amendment is completely inappropriate and incompatible with the progress achieved on disability rights, which your Lordships’ House can be rightly proud of helping to secure. That is quite apart from the crass insensitivity to me, as a disabled and equal Member of your Lordships’ House, of the noble Lord’s hijacking of my disability equality Bill in order to advance a blatantly discriminatory eugenic agenda.
I understand why those who oppose my Bill are desperate to misrepresent it and to say that it is all about abortion, which it barely touches, and to ignore disability equality and disability rights before birth. Their message is stark and bleak. It is: “Let’s ignore the fact that these disabled babies are human beings, with an equal right to exist. Let’s reclassify them and call them foetal anomalies. Let’s go one better and call them serious foetal anomalies. What does it matter that the Department of Health collects no data centrally on so-called fatal foetal anomalies, as long as we can use the term to dehumanise?” Well this foetal anomaly, this proud Member of your Lordships’ House, is  having none of it. I utterly reject this medical mindset that clings to the idea that a disabled baby is a medical failure to be eradicated through abortion. I begged no one for my equality. I know I have as much right as anyone to be alive.
However, should the noble Lord decide not to withdraw his amendment and instead to divide the House, I humbly ask that all noble Lords stand with me and people with congenital disabilities and affirm that we are all equal.